Words Once Uttered - Chapter One
by Brooke Keaton
Summary: It's five years after the TITANIC tragedy and Rose has finally moved on. But just as she's beginning to enjoy her burgeoning acting career, an unwelcomed guest resurfaces - and tries to steal her heart.


She couldn't stand to look at her reflection. Not because of what she'd see in her face, but what she'd see in his.

It had not been so long ago that they had looked at one another the same way - she at her dressing table and he leaning handsomely against the doorframe. In his hands, he had held the Heart of the Ocean - at once a gift, and now a curse.

"I'm not sure how you found me, but I think you should forget how you got here," Rose said coolly, removing the heavy faux diamond earrings she had worn during the day's filming. "For God's sake, I pretended to be dead."

"You never were one for subtlety," Cal replied smugly, taking two large, relaxed strides toward his former fiance. She cringed. What would he do? Slap her? Throw something at her? Kill her? No. Not until he had that diamond back in his hands.

"I think you should leave."

"Listen, Rose, we can do this one of two ways." He waved his hand in the air before pointing an index finger toward the ceiling. "One, we can have a rational, adult conversation about what you're doing here in Los Angeles pretending to be some vagabond's widow actress, or two," now pointing two fingers at the sky, "you can continue being arrogant and ignore me into arresting you for theft. But that's your decision."

"Really, Cal, if you were going to do this, did it really have to be while I'm on set? This isn't the time or place."

"What would be the time or place? You - " he stopped, smiling to himself. Rose remembered hating that smile; beneath its charm lay a never ending stream of planning, conniving, and nothing that ever amounted to something good.

He shook his head. "No, I'm not going to argue with you. Instead, I'm going to invite you out to dinner."

"You're what?" Rose asked. She squinted at him, her brain pounding for any reason he may want to take her to dinner other than badgering her for the necklace. "If you want the necklace-"

"You need to stop with your tunnel vision. The necklace wasn't the only thing I lost that night - if you recall."

"I recall that night all too well. Although I try not to remember..." she trailed off. The screaming. The wailing. The asking of God for just a little bit of mercy in a horrific hour. The knives of below freezing water cutting into her body. The quiet killer that took souls from hundreds of people during the night.

"Let's not kid ourselves, Rose. I can't say it wouldn't be magnificent to wrap my fist around that diamond again until it left a permanent mark on my hand. I'd be crazy not to try. But..."

"So you're saying you have other motives in taking me to dinner other than prying the diamond out of my cold dead hands? Because that would be the only way you'd get it."

"Can I finish a sentence, Miss Dawson?" His lips curled at the mention of her name, and Rose rolled her eyes. Cal took another few steps toward her and sat on the edge of her dressing table, mere inches away from where she sat. She felt like she was seeing what her future could have been - evenings filled of arguing, misery, and a husband who just plopped himself all over your furniture when you didn't devote every moment to hanging on his every word.

"Go ahead, but don't exert yourself too much. I'm already growing faint from all the hot air you're blowing around here."

"It's just dinner. Free food. Imagine. That's probably a delightful offer based on what you're getting paid for this film. What is the going rate for entry-level actresses these days?"

Gritting her teeth, Rose knew she was about to succumb to dinner with the very man who tried to kill her - on a sinking ship, no less - years before.

"If I agree to dinner, what then? What's the point of all this?"

Cal's face sunk, his voice becoming more serious. "I know I wasn't any woman's ideal vision of a husband. And I know now how badly I must have treated you for you to run off with - him. A penniless artist."

"If you're just going to insult him, then you can just-"

"It's not a matter of insulting. It's a matter of realizing what should have been important. I had everything your family wanted. I had everything your family needed." Rose jerked her head up at this, never before realizing that maybe he had always known her mother was only invested in the arrangement for his money. "You still chose the person who made you happy. It went against everything we were ever told."

"And... and what does any of that mean now? Why seek me out?"

"Because I thought you were dead. That is, until Charlie - remember Charlie? - well, Charlie has a thing for the cinema. Can't fathom why; I'm not very entertained by the stuff. But see, Charlie saw some film and told me I just had to see it - there was a woman who looked uncannily like my deceased fiance, and I absolutely wouldn't believe my eyes. And there you were, going by the name of "Rose Dawson", which I couldn't help but notice in the credits."

Rose looked away from the pained look on his face. It was worse than a face of betrayal - it was more than hurt and pain. A deeper sorrow than when he had come searching for her on Carpathia and left empty-handed.

"I think that's when I realized I was never really what you wanted," he said. "Ever. You know, for years, your mother and my family would talk about what happened with you and - him - as if it was just an act of defiance. You knew it would anger us. But to actually survive, know that at least your own mother survived, change your identity, and not pretend you had died? That was quite the epiphany for me."

They sat in silence for a few moments, not knowing what to say to one another. Rose could never apologize for leaving, especially leaving for Jack, and Cal had just opened up to her more than in the years they had courted before the Titanic disaster.

"I'm sorry it had to end that way," Rose stated. "And yes, I will go to dinner with you. But it must also end after that. But that's all. We'll just... catch up."

"And that's all I can ask." Cal took her hands in his, which jarred her a bit. She hadn't touched those hands in the longest time, and she wasn't sure how she felt about grasping their warmth again. "I don't foresee us writing letters back and forth like best friends, but I do want to make sure you're happy."

"I'm more than happy, Cal. I'll go to dinner with you, but I can assure you I've never been happier."


End file.
